'Sallies of the imagination': Visual imagery and the works of Laurence Sterne

An outstanding component of the writings of Laurence Sterne—present in his correspondence and sermons as well as Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey—is his use of pictorial language and technique, a rhetorical trope I label “visuality.” The starting point of this study is an extensive examination of visuality throughout Sterne's works, not only to document its prevalence but also to discover and identify similarities in its use throughout his diverse work. For example, Sterne consistently asks his readers to visualize a character or place with carefully crafted descriptions conveyed by words alone.; The second chapter is a thorough survey of the critical commentary on Sterne, from the first reviews to the latest scholarly writings. Although detailed discussion of Sterne's visuality has coalesced only in the last forty years, I have uncovered a significant history of similar discussion spanning the more than two centuries since Sterne's first publication that represents him as an artist reflective of contemporary values: thus Sterne is described as a realist, impressionist, mannerist, and surrealist.; These chapters provide the foundation for two subsequent chapters exploring several ways in which the visual illustrators of Sterne's texts, from the contemporary works of Hogarth and Bunbury to the recent photo-collages of John Baldessari and the comic book by Martin Rowson, all function as interpreters of Sterne's own visuality, through what W. J. T. Mitchell describes as the “dialectic of word and image.” Chapter 3 examines eight variations of “Trim reading the sermon” that have accompanied editions of Tristram Shandy in the last 120 years; the wide range of depictions changing critical and cultural attitudes towards Sterne's work as well as towards the idea of text itself (symbolized by the sermon) in the twentieth century. Chapter 4 examines the contemporary illustrations of both A Sentimental Journey and Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling as didactic readings that emphasize socially benevolent sentiment. Chapter 5 views the changing visual depictions of “Poor Maria” between 1770 and 1884 as indications of shifts in the perception of the sentimental.